November 2008

November 27, 2008

It must have been Jamie Oliver – a man now living in a (cough, cough) ‘peasant’ kitchen garden, most recently filmed behind the wheel of the country/city person’s vehicle of choice, the Land Rover* - who alerted me to pangritata, when he was younger, thinner and often on the ABC. Collectively, we were pasta-obsessed in the nineties, but not so much a decade later. Perhaps it was a case of overkill? Pasta is, however, about as cheap and cheerful a meal as you could wish and all it requires resides, long-term, in the pantry.

Pangritata is a Southern Italian stroke of genius; a peasant substitute for Parmesan cheese born both of necessity and poverty. Modest ingredients – stale bread; hardy herbs, picked from a Mediterranean hillside; a clove of crushed garlic and a few anchovies or olives from the stores – fried until crisp and golden in olive oil, suggest little, but pangritata is oh so much more.

Drying rosemary at home is profoundly simple. I’ve never bought it dried and neither, I think, should you. I heartily recommend any of the following methods for procuring your rosemary, all of which I have been, at one time or another, according to the state of my wallet, guilty: buy a plant, pot it nicely and harvest when the sprigs are long and lush; buy a bundle from your favourite grocer, use some fresh (that scent…crushed between the fingers…bliss) and dry the remainder; find a friendly neighbour with a healthy bush growing in their garden and ask, politely, for a sprig or two; or, wait until it’s dark, grab a pair of scissors, check over your shoulder and discreetly snip away.

Take the sprigs (the longer, the better), tie them together at the base with string or sewing thread (whatever you have to hand) and hang them somewhere dry and airy. In a week or two, strip, then crumble the needles into a jar and store for up to six months in the pantry.

Pasta with pangritata – feeds 2You may be left with some pangritata crumbs, but they keep, and well, in an airtight container. Scatter as you would parmesan. I’m generous with oil – always, and make no apology – but please, don’t be tempted to use less than 2 tablespoons when frying off these crumbs. The oil is precisely what makes them so good.

Warm 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan. Add the onion and sauté until soft then tip in the tomatoes, juices and all, the chilli powder if you’re using it, and bubble away for 5-10 minutes. If your tomatoes are whole, break them up with a wooden spoon while this is happening.

Get your pasta cooking.

Toast the bread in a toaster, even if it’s very stale. Tear into pieces and whiz to chunky crumbs in a food processor with the anchovies (or olives) and rosemary. Heat 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan. When hot, add the breadcrumbs and fry until golden, toasty and fragrant. Remove to a plate to cool.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and toss through the tomato sauce. Warm gently and serve in bowls topped generously with the pangritata.

*Good for you, Jamie. Good for us. You’ve done an excellent, repeat, excellent job of making people approach food in a new light. I love you for it despite that supercilious comment.

November 26, 2008

This week, Kathryn decreed the frittata a perfect pantry meal. There isn’t an easier, swifter-to-prep, more balanced meal I know.

She’s absolutely right. Frittatas are the very reason we keep a dozen eggs - good, sunset-orange yolked ones when possible - on top of the fridge. Frittata may just be the perfect dish. So perfect in fact, I want to convert the shed into a palatial chicken coop and gather our own eggs à la Tom and Barbara Good.

Potatoes went in, simply because there were leftovers from the night before. No need for wastage given the current economic gloom. (Why is it always potatoes I overestimate and not, say, broccoli or cabbage?) Chopped chunkily, edges crisped a little among the tangle of two red onions, softened and golden, in the pan. I used half a teaspoon of smoked paprika in place of Kathryn’s oregano and an enormous handful of parsley (a few of the plants are already bolting in the warmer weather). I’ve always got a bag of frozen peas, so an icy handful went in too. Before pouring eight eggs over the lot, they were broken into a bowl and a fork dragged through their yolks – no energetic beating required. Frittata is a simple culinary formula worth teaching your children, your spouse, your neighbour, yourself.

Spears of witlof (endive) on the side, tossed in a mustard and olive oil dressing, is all I would want for, but rocket dressed the same way is no second best.

Check out those pantries, people. The Pantry Challenge: Mark 2 closes over at Limes and Lycopene on the 30th of November. The challenge is to use just what's on Kathryn's list of pantry basics (I have deviated, so technically, this isn't an entry!). It's a great deal of fun limiting yourself and a frittata is a very good place to begin your thinking.

November 23, 2008

That first bag of cherries, carefully chosen and cradled home as the precious cargo it is, must be one of the great celebratory, seasonal rites. Cherries and Christmas in the southern hemisphere are inextricably linked and, seeing them heaped in a near-black, glossy pile at the market, set out in a small wooden crate on the counter, a place reserved for Very Special produce, makes me suddenly aware (and, it must be said, slightly nervous) that it very nearly December.

Heat-hazed, shimmering days and the clear, glittering nights of summer are not far away.

Along with their fuzzy-cheeked cousin the apricot, cherries are the first stonefruit of the season. Their arrival seems to make everyone at the market rather happy. I'm always chuffed when the waxen white cherries return, but the Homerianwine dark kind, bleeding beautiful, slightly gruesome juices when cut, have far more going for them flavour-wise. They need precious little to make them shine.

The formula given for successful kanten-making often reads as follows:

1 tablespoon of agar flakes + 1 cup of chosen liquid = jelly

Which will indeed make you a jelly, an excellent one, but one set as solidly, as rigidly, as that which sits at the bottom of a petri dish in a science lab. Not what springs to mind when I think jelly. For a softly set jelly, the kind that glitteringly, quiveringly, begs you to break its glossy surface, sink in a spoon, and lift it, wobbling all the way, to your lips, the formula needs re-jigging:

Do as you prefer and, most of all, experiment; have some fun. This post will guide you well. Agar has no calories (hooray!)and will set most anything (hooray!) but foods that are high in oxalic acid. So no spinach, no rhubarb and, thankfully, no chocolate. I can think of any number of better uses for the latter...as, I am sure, can you.

Cherry Kanten (Jelly) – feeds 4-6Cherry juice is, granted, not easy (nor cheap) to come by in Australia. You could juice your own I suppose, but can you imagine how tedious that would be? Instead, use all apple or something else that takes your fancy – grape juice, pear or even a little thinned apricot nectar. Sets at room temperature in 1 hour.

Heat juices, alcohol and agave syrup in a small, non-reactive saucepan. Bring to a boil, skimming any scum that rises to the surface. Reduce heat to a simmer and sprinkle the agar over the surface. Simmer, stirring often, for 10 minutes or until agar has dissolved.

In between stirring your jelly, halve and pit the cherries. Peel, stone and slice the peach. Distribute the fruit evenly between 4-6 small bowls or teacups – something pretty that you will be serving them in.

Ladle the hot liquid into each bowl and leave, at room temperature, to set.

November 20, 2008

Intensely fungal may not be the sort of culinary description to sway most, but given its context – a lazy day of reading Simon Hopkinson in the sun, perched in the centre of a large rug in my large, empty back garden – and the fact that I’ve been craving knife-and-fork food for weeks, sway me it did. It wasn’t Hopkinson who convinced me (lashings of tongue and foie gras, anyone?); rather it was Nigel Slater, two days later, from this dog-eared, food-spattered favourite.

I am in love.

The first time we ate these mushrooms, grilled to perfect succulence on an oiled tray in the oven, my hunch that garlic should top the velvet gills was a good one, but not the chunky, lazy cut I had, lazily, favoured. Tweaking was required, because somewhere between grill and plate, something unexpected, something magical had happened.

There is immense satisfaction to be had from looking closely. I mean, just look at those velvet, earthy gills. Aren't they amazing?

The only thing I will add – and I’m certain that Nigel would approve - is that garlic and mushrooms are a sort of proverbial celestial match; pungent and earthy in a savoury, very luscious way. Garlic-addicted though we (mostly) are in these parts, handling the stuff before tea and toast at breakfast is a little too overpowering, even for me. So, before trundling off to bed, I peeled two cloves of garlic and crushed them roughly with a satisfying, pestle-heavy bash from on high, before sinking them into a deep pool of olive oil. No precious chopping here. All you want is their perfume. I strained the oil before the embarrassingly liberal libation that follows because the alternative – finely chopped pieces – will catch in the heat of the grill and burn. Not always bad, sometimes quite desirable, but not here.

But, hey, even an hour’s garlicky soaking is a good thing in my book. So in love.

Nigel Slater’s Grilled Mushrooms

Simplicity. Lifted, entirely, from Slater’s The 30-Minute Cook. Because, frankly, I can’t make it sound any better, nor any easier, than he. Though I would suggest that do cut out the stalks if your mushrooms are hat-sized. As were mine. Oh, and garlicky oil. Lots and lots of it. More than you may think wise. Then some.

‘Big velvet-gilled field mushrooms. As big as a beret. Brush them generously with olive oil. Put a knob of butter and a glug of oil in the upturned cup. Grind a little pepper and salt, and grill, on a low heat, constantly buttering and oiling till you have a gold, brown and black mushroom. As savoury and tender as a piece of steak.’

November 11, 2008

The light over here, on the kitchen side of the house, is soft and low key.

Firstly, I feel I must draw your attention to an oversight. While setting up a shiny new recipe index, I noted a distinct lack of chocolate among these pages. Not at all
reflective of how we eat, it needed some correcting.

Cooking has been a slow task, one which scared me for a while. Things simply wouldn't work. Even Deborah Madison failed me. (Truth be told, I suspect it was I who failed her.) So I took a deep breath and we tried again, Deborah and I. I doubled the batter and used a little more of it per Scallion Crêpe. Pretty, but also brilliantly useful. They will appear over and over again in my kitchen.

Things began to fall back into place.

The garden keeps giving me things. There was a fight in the fledgling veggie patch on Saturday between three birds and I found this lovely thing the next morning. It's just a magpie's feather, but it made me look more closely.

Soft light it is, and subtle.

I kept coming back to this carrot soup; completely raw and served cold. A show-stopping shade of bright, bright orange, whipped into airy mouthfuls with avocado. It's glorious and quite, quite grown-up. Integral to it's success however, is, for the juicer-less among you, über-fresh juice. Frothy and made by you mere moments before blending. I juiced the ginger with the carrots and tossed the diced avocado with cumin rather than curry powder, but otherwise, I followed Molly precisely.

Perfect for the sweltering days to come.

Saturday morning, the garden yielded most of what goes into Madison's Garlic Soup. It's a delicious recipe, pulled out every year, when the garlic is young and juicy. Adding handfuls this time of sage, thyme and parsley I used more than 2 heads of garlic. You should too. A pot of nettle tea, re-introduced by a rather clever friend had a subtle but significant impact on the flavour.

Superb. Best version yet.

Then there was this. Rather suggestive that photo, don't you think? Then again, it was that kind of dish. Groans were definitely audible.

A raisiny, boozy, honey-soaked concoction of fresh and dried pears. Scattered near the end with a crumble of nuts - pistachios, walnuts and sliced almonds - made using just a tablespoon of butter and another of soft brown sugar. Grand Marnier and excellent, fudgy dried pears, soaked back to tenderness made this incredibly voluptuous.

November 02, 2008

With a garden full of herbs, it is not so easy to choose a favourite. Coriander is high on the list, jostling for attention with flat-leaf parsley and lemon-scented thyme; fresh bay leaves, plucked from a pot by the back door are irreplaceable, yes, but to pick an absolute favourite is no simple task. In the end, the herb picked me.

James Oseland calls it Vietnamese basil. Down here, it is often referred to as Vietnamese mint and in other parts it lurks in shady, damp spots as Vietnamese coriander. Though all three are wildly incorrect, what all three do offer is some insight for those unfamiliar with what the people of Vietnam, and increasingly the rest of us, know as rau ram. Nibbling a leaf offers a hint of basil’s anise, another reveals the cooling effect of mint (with a spicy, citrussy punch) but it is coriander (cilantro) that offers the best description. If you dislike coriander, the chances are rau ram won’t win you over, despite those pretty leaves.

Simple to grow, rau ram requires regular trimming, part shade and more water than it should given the emptiness of our dams, but as a salad herb, it’s delicious and that alone justifies its presence for me. Given the right moist, healthy conditions rau ram, like mint, quickly becomes invasive. Keep it potted instead and vow to use it regularly. Amazingly, it roots easily if a sprig is placed in small a glass of water and left on the windowsill. Skeptical, I did just that and though it took longer than the suggested 2-3 days, I now have three fledgling plants to with which to play.

Laksa, but lighter serves 3-4So. You've succumbed to the lure that is chicken stock. Laced with all things fragrant – coriander, lemongrass, ginger – there is also a shredded pile of perfectly-poached chicken flesh that requires some attention. The dog can have a dish, the cat, too, but a small pile will shine in this spicy, healing soup. Rice milk is stunning here, lightening the calorific load considerably. Authenticity be damned.

Peel the onion and garlic, then slice them thinly. Finely grate the ginger. Slice the chilli into rings. Heat a deep saucepan, pour in the oil and stir-fry the onion until soft. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add the red curry, stand back, and stir it about for a few minutes longer. Pour in the stock, coconut and rice milks and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile slice the carrots thinly and cut into attractive shapes. Sliver the snowpeas diagonally. Place the noodles in a heatproof bowl, boil a kettle of water and, when ready, cover the noodles well. Rest them in their bath for 3 minutes, then drain and toss with a little oil.

Add the vegetables, noodles, chicken and most of the rau ram leaves to the soup. Simmer until the carrots are tender but retain some bite. Season to taste with fish sauce or tamari and the lime before serving in deep bowls, sprinkled with the shallots and topped with the remaining rau ram.